Bandai Namco’s latest anime-aesthetic adventure starts out in the ‘serious’ section of the anime universe. Tales of Arise is a story about an enslaved race of people, who slowly learn to pick up arms and fight back against the oppressors who’ve held a vice-like grip around their throats for over three centuries. The Dahnans have been made to suffer unimaginable horrors under the rule of the Renans, who hail from a technologically-advanced world and will stop at nothing to drain this planet’s resources and its people for all they’re worth, and the action-RPG isn’t shying away from studying the exploitation and loss of self that takes hold under slavery....

Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance is in development at Cats Who Play, maker of RTS Syrian Warfare, and published by Slitherine. The debut cinematic is below: And here’s a snippet of gameplay, showing a fly-by of a battle in Oklahoma City: Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance follows the war between humanity and Legion’s synthetic intelligent machine network (the equivalent of Skynet in the Dark Fate timeline). In the single-player campaign, you assume the role of a commander in the Founders faction and use your army to fight Legion....

Whilst not formally confirmed by developer Neon Giant - all we got was a cheeky tease on Twitter celebrating the game’s first anniversary and a ten-second video - we are told to “gear up for a new contract”, leading some to speculate that it may be referencing new, and currently unannounced, DLC. “It’s our 1st Year Anniversary!” Neon Giant tweeted. “We’re humbled by the support and love we’ve had since launch....

Oskar Stålberg, the creator of Townscaper and also Bad North, announced the browser-based demo via Twitter this afternoon. You can find the demo over at oskarstalberg.com/Townscaper I spent a few minutes building my own colourful seaside village - it’s a simple but intriguing little toy, with a gorgeous style pitched somewhere between Mario Sunshine’s Delphino Plaza and Pixar’s Luca. “This is an art toy to savour, and a time-waster of great power,” our Chris Donlan said in Eurogamer’s Townscaper review....

As explained on Xbox Wire, the free trial can be claimed through Xbox Game Pass Perks, and can be activated any time from now until 30th September. If you claimed the previous Disney+ Perk, you should still be able to claim this one - but it can only be activated on a new Disney+ subscriber account. If you’re thinking of only using the trial for that 30-day period, remember that like most subscription trials you’ll need to manually cancel your subscription before the end of the trial period if you don’t want to get charged for the next month....

The launch of season nine, which is known as Hidden Alliance will go live on 12th May and will add a new big bad to the game: Captain Lewis. As well as this hulking brute, there will also be four new mini bosses for players to square up against, or Lewis’ “True sons” as Ubisoft calls them. This update will also introduce a new eight-player co-op mode called Countdown. As the name suggests, here players making up two teams will be given a 15-minute countdown to stabilize a power plant before it’s locked down for good....

While the majority of the studio’s output was rather simplistic casual games for mobile, the man behind Sonic, NiGHTS, and yes, even Billy Hatcher, hadn’t given up on creating another colourful mascot action-platformer. This brings us to Rodea the Sky Soldier. Which is not really a platformer at all, since the magic comes from not touching the ground, but rather soaring and bounding between targets. You pilot the titular robot boy who’s trying to recover his memories while defending the floating kingdom of Garuda from the dastardly mechanical Naga Empire....

During her audition for the part, Ramsey was asked if she’d played any of Naughty Dog’s critically-acclaimed game. When she answered honestly - “nope” - she was apparently “encouraged” not to. “I was actually encouraged not to,” Ramsey told USA Today. “After my first audition, they asked me, ‘Have you played it?’ And I said ’nope’, and they said, ‘Keep it that way’. “I did watch some of the gameplay on YouTube just to get a sense of it,” she added....

My own journey with Trails began in 2020. Having finished Ys VIII, a friend recommended Trails of Cold Steel and a year later – Reverie and Kuro aside – I’d finished the wider series. Considering Kuro No Kiseki’s just kicked off the second half when there were 10 games before it, you can appreciate the sense of scale we’re working with here. Yet, I’d struggle to name a bad entry....

Not to be outdone by the console platform-holders, the annual PC Gaming Show makes a return on 12th June at 8.30pm UK time. That’s shortly after Microsoft’s Xbox and Bethesda showcase which starts at 6pm UK time. The PC Gaming Show will feature a mix of exclusive announcements, brand-new trailers, and interviews with developers, broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch. This includes new footage of the recently announced Arma 4 and an ambitious mod for Half-Life: Alyx....

This song is sung in Latin, adding to the mysterious aura that surrounds these bats. However, one player has recently discovered a translation of the bats’ song and revealed its unsettling translation. Twitter user Chinchillazilla (via Screen Rant) wrote, “just learned that the singing bats in Elden Ring are singing in Latin and their song is a huge bummer”. The user then went on leave a copy of the translated song for others to mull over....

The SN850 is a fantastic SSD from one of the best computer storage manufacturers, Western Digital. Its size and speed are more than enough to run and load all of the latest games without any issue. The SSD also has a cool RGB strip on the top which can be configured in a range of colours to match your setup. For both PS5 and PC there’s lots of benefits when using the SN850....

The livestream will feature new game reveals, exclusive footage, and game launches during the show. Already set to be shown are Moomin stealth game Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley, Coffee Talk Episode 2, ecological strategy game Terra Nil, and more. Almost one hundred games will be shown in total. The livestream will be on Saturday 11th June at 9.30am PT (5.30pm UK time). You can sign up to the mailing list for details....

Logitech G432 The G432 is the baseline for gaming headsets, and it’s a really good one to have. For just £30 you’ll get 7.1 surround sound and a flip-to-mute microphone on a wired headset that is light and comfortable enough to wear for hours. There’s nothing flashy about the G432, but if you just want something that will plug into anything with a 3.5mm jack and give you good sound quality it’s hard to go wrong with it....

However, Hungarian digital artist Zsolt Kosa actually envisioned this collaboration much, much, earlier. Perhaps, even before developer CD Projekt Red did. Two years ago, Kosa shared two mocked up posters of Elba in Cyberpunk 2077 to his ArtStation page. The first of these shows Elba with ice blue cyber-eyes and an impressively collared coat (as shown in this article’s header image). The second shows him with some rather fancy looking sunglasses, and that same very fetching coat....

If you go over to Woot right now, you can pick up this Xbox Series S for just $219.99. Given how cheap the console is originally, this is a phenomenal deal and, by far, the cheapest way into modern gaming. Xbox Series S - $219.99 (was $299.99) If you’re in the UK, you can grab this Xbox Series S from Currys for just £184. This is a serious saving With the Xbox Series S, you have the next iteration of Xbox, including upgraded specs, better Xbox compatability and a brand new controller....

There’s an immediate sense that the developers have tried to really achieve something special here and that starts with the camera work: most of the game’s cinematics use a mix of stationary shots and slower panning shots, typical of early Japanese film. Camera framing takes a lot of inspiration from this work as well; a lot of care has been taken with shot composition, with carefully framed foreground, midfield, and background detail....

“As we said previously, the incident was a result of a server configuration change that allowed improper access by an unauthorized third party. Our team took action to fix the configuration issue and secure our systems,” it reads. “Twitch passwords have not been exposed. We are also confident that systems that store Twitch login credentials, which are hashed with bcrypt, were not accessed, nor were full credit card numbers or ACH / bank information....

Twitch’s controversial raid feature was originally designed to be an easy way for streamers to share audiences by enabling them to redirect all viewers currently watching their broadcast to a target channel. Unfortunately, malicious users quickly began exploiting the feature, setting up dummy accounts and bots to flood the chats of often marginalised streamers and subject them to doxing, harassment, and attack. Following a successful 24-hour strike by streamers last month in protest of Twitch’s perceived lack of action in tackling the issue, the company said it was “working hard on improved channel-level ban evasion detection and additional account improvements to help make Twitch a safer place for creators....

Following rumours that The Sands of Time remake - which has moved release date several times now - was being delisted at some major retailers, Ubisoft released a brief statement confirming the game has formally been “delisted” as the game’s latest development studio, Ubisoft Montreal “continue[s] the work to deliver a great remake”. The Sands of Time remake was being developed by Ubisoft Pune and Mumbai, but the project has been dogged by setbacks since its unveiling in September 2020....